CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez, the fiery populist who declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela, crusaded against US influence and championed a leftist revival across Latin America, died yesterday at age 58, after nearly two years of battling cancer.

Vice-president Nicolas Maduro — who Chavez named as his successor three days before his final surgery — announced the death in a national television broadcast. He said Chavez died at 4:25 pm local time.

After his diagnosis, Chavez acknowledged that he had been recklessly neglecting his health. He had taken to staying up late and drinking as many as 40 cups of coffee a day, he said.

In his more than 14 years in office, the firebrand leader routinely challenged the status quo at home and internationally.

He presided over a divided nation but was also a masterful communicator and strategist who tapped into Venezuelan nationalism to win broad support, particularly among the poor.

Chavez repeatedly proved himself a political survivor. As an army paratroop commander, he led a failed coup in 1992, then was pardoned and elected president in 1998. He survived a coup against his own presidency in 2002 and won re-election two more times.

The burly president electrified crowds with his booming voice, often wearing the bright red of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela or the fatigues and red beret of his army days.

Before his struggle with cancer, he appeared on television almost daily, talking for hours at a time and often breaking into song of philosophical discourse. Chavez used his country’s vast oil wealth to launch social programmes that include state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and education programmes.

Poverty declined during Chavez’s presidency amid a historic boom in oil earnings, but critics said he failed to use the windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the country’s economy. Inflation soared and the homicide rate rose to among the highest in the world.

Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba in June 2011 to remove what he said was a baseball-size tumour from his pelvic region, but the cancer returned repeatedly over the next 18 months, despite more surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

He kept key details of his illness, including the type of cancer and the precise location of the tumours, secret.

“El Comandante,” as he was known, stayed in touch with the Venezuelan people during his treatment via Twitter and phone calls broadcast on television, but even those messages dropped off as his health deteriorated. Two months after his last re-election in October, Chavez again returned to Cuba for cancer surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane.

He was never seen in public again.

Throughout his presidency, Chavez said he hoped to fulfil Bolivar’s unrealised dream of uniting South America. He was also inspired by Cuban leader Fidel Castro and took on the ageing revolutionary’s role as Washington’s chief antagonist in the Western Hemisphere after Castro relinquished the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006.

Supporters saw Chavez as the latest in a colourful line of revolutionary legends, from Castro to Argentine-born Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

He nurtured that cult of personality, and even as he stayed out of sight for long stretches fighting cancer, his lifesized image appeared on buildings and billboard throughout Venezuela.

The airwaves boomed with his baritone mantra: “I am a nation.”Supporters carried posters and wore masks of his eyes, chanting: “I am Chavez.”

Chavez saw himself as a revolutionary and saviour of the poor. “A revolution has arrived here,” he declared in a 2009 speech. “No one can stop this revolution.”

Chavez’s social programmes won him enduring support: Poverty rates declined from 50 per cent at the beginning of his term in 1999 to 32 per cent in the second half of 2011. But he also charmed his audience with sheer charisma and a flair for drama that played well for the cameras. He ordered the sword of South American independence leader Simon Bolivar removed from Argentina’s Central Bank to unsheathe at key moments.

On television, he would lambast his opponents as “oligarchs”, announce expropriations of companies and lecture Venezuelans about the glories of socialism.

His performances included renditions of folk songs and impromptu odes to Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong and 19th Century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Chavez carried his in-yourface style to the world stage as well.

In a 2006 speech to the UN General Assembly, he called President George W Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulphur after Bush’s address.

Critics saw Chavez as a typical Latin American caudillo, a strongman who ruled through force of personality and showed disdain for democratic rules.

He insisted all the while that Venezuela remained a vibrant democracy and denied trying to restrict free speech. But some opponents faced criminal charges and were driven into exile. While Chavez trumpeted plans for communes and an egalitarian society, his soaring rhetoric regularly conflicted with reality.

Despite government seizures of companies and farmland, the balance between Venezuela’s public and private sectors changed little during his presidency. And even as the poor saw their incomes rise, those gains were blunted by the weakening of the country’s currency amid economic controls.

He was the son of schoolteacher parents and the second of six brothers. Chavez was a fine baseball player and hoped he might one day pitch in the US major leagues.

He joined the military at age 17.

His second marriage, to journalist Marisabel Rodriguez, deteriorated in the early years of his presidency, and they divorced in 2004. In addition to their one daughter, Rosines, Chavez had three children from his first marriage, which ended before Chavez ran for office.